It’s not very hard to find bartending competitions and cocktail competitions. Here are our five suggestions we tell our students if they want to be competitive bartenders!

The first and easiest way for a beginner bartender to break into the bartending competition scene is to check out Liquor.com. They have constant updates and streamline the sign up process a great deal. There’s also a good deal of back and forth communication between the brand hosting the competition and yourself, so it’s fairly easy to keep track of all the rules!

A second way, is to join a local meetup or group of bartenders. Many times these groups will create grassroot contests between them and if the campaign gets big enough, it’s very possible for liquor companies to pay attention to them. These competitions, while not necessarily prestigious, tend to be a good opportunity to break nerves in a casual setting. Also, since it’s not focused on pleasing a brand, but rather pleasing their community, they tend to be a lot of fun for all attendees!

A third option is to join a bartending school. Some bartending schools like our own, are great places for getting information about these local communities and organizers. They can connect you directly with them if they hear something. Many times, speakers from brands or with industry know-how will come in and give lectures about future events that students can apply for or tips on how to be selected for an appearance at one.

A fourth option is to join the USBG, or United States Bartending Guild. Many brands will host small “USBG” exclusive competitions in local communities. These tend to be centralized competitions!

A fifth way, is to be so good at bartending and branding, that brand ambassadors will actively approach you to compete for a contest that they’ll be hosting. While this way has the least amount of red tape, you’ll have to be pretty good at networking to get to this point! By being a damn good bartender, using a combination of the above four points and by engaging with industry contacts, there's no doubt that you will get to this last one!

How To Hire Bartenders and Service Staff

While high tech recruiting firms an average of $16,000 for a hire, a restaurants and bar ability to be able such an amount for talent is extremely rare. Instead, most restaurants choose to do hiring independently. This usually means placing a "now hiring" ad on the door for onlookers to see--and hopefully apply.

Besides the now hiring ad, the most common way restaurants find bartenders is through a referral or word of mouth. This is when someone puts in a good work, says they know whats expected and will fit into the culture of the bar almost immediately.

Online has also become a very powerful tool for finding bartenders. Many bar owners that post online bartending job ads are in an immediate need for a person fast, or they need to hire a large amount of people. Partially because most bartenders aren't tech savvy, but also because of tradition, many if not all job postings remain on Craigslist. However, this isn't set in stone and does vary greatly based on city.

Recently in Philadelphia, there has been some pretty great competition to Craigslist. One of the more popular ones, especially in Philadelphia, is known as Culinaryagents. This website has given a huge revamp and focused on connecting hospitality professionals around the world to finding a job. The users of this website tend to be younger, but are very eager to learn and excel in their field.

Just because these are solutions that are common, doesn't mean it's safe to say that every city in the world will work the same. In fact, you might be losing on a huge pool of applicants if you aren't proactive with what you do! If you ever get stuck, the solution is to network with others! Talk with other restaurateurs across the country and asking them if they know anyone good looking for a job. You can also ask, if it's a small city, where they post jobs and how they hire, trying to copy there example.

All over the country, there are thousands of network events, many are free, which are hosted by universities like Drexel's philly chef conference or the ncbshow. If there isn't any, you can always start your own on a website like meetup!

Aqua Vitae Institute can also connect to a network of hundreds graduates for free of charge by just filling out the hire a bartender form here. If you have preferences like height, personality type, beer experts or flair bartenders, we can vet our people and match with those we think might be a decent fit for the bar's image for you ahead of time and streamline the process greatly.

If you would like more indepth strategies to finding staff or need help retaining staff, Aqua Vitae Institute also offers a Bar Leadership Course. Contact us for more information!

Ice does three primary functions in every cocktail. First, it lowers the temperature of the drink. Secondly, it adds water to the drink. Third, it adds texture to the drink.

Let’s first focus on the cooling of the drink aspect:

As a drink gets colder, our ability to experience different tastes change. For example, we would need to add some more sugar to taste sweetness. We would need to add more bitters, to taste bitters. We also dull our sense of tasting alcohol, which helps lower quality spirits become more palatable. Moreover, there’s a cooling sensation that occurs as well while drinking a cold drink. It feels refreshing.

Secondly, water affects flavor:

People typically have trouble differentiating flavor in water. But in cocktails the addition of water becomes apparent. When there’s too much, a cocktail will become diluted and taste weak. When there’s too little water, the cocktail will taste strong and it’ll be difficult for many to discern the flavor profiles over the alcoholic burning sensation that occurs.

The addition of water also has a slight flavor and gives cocktails a sort of regional difference that is slightly noticeable! For example, a New York City made Old Fashioned, will taste completely different than the same exact drink being made in Berlin, Germany with the only difference being the water used! Every municipal has different chemical additions they add to water during the water treatment process, and while most treated water is almost completely distilled, there are still some trace minerals that are added like: Fluoride, Magnesium, Sodium, Calcium, and many other minerals.

Many water bottles, specifically higher end waters, will actually list the PH and other minerals so you can try making ice with them and seeing how it compares!

For texture, there are thousands of different sized ice cubes. The usage of crushed ice makes it so that a 16 oz hurricane glass, could be filled with as little as 3 oz of mixture. Traditionally, bars preferred to use “nugget ice” or “crescent ice” (both pictured below), to impress guests by making them perceive there is more volume in there drinks, while it's all just cheap water!

Source: http://public.tailbase.com/image/664/Types-of-Ice.jpg

Recently, consumers have gotten smarter, and larger blocks of ice have been used in higher end bars. This is preferred because top bartenders have noticed that there is a sweet spot in flavor after a certain amount of dilution. In order to keep it at that constant, peak, flavor, they will also prefer to use ice that is large that it barely fits in a glass, but also shaped in a sphere as it exposes the least amount of surface area, and thus melts slower than another shape of ice.

Finally, there are other ways ice affect tastes, for example, it does also change the PH level of the cocktail!

I'm having some trouble with my first bartending job. It's at one of the most popular fine dining bars in Center City Philadelphia and I'm working with some great people. I get along really well with the owners and the senior bartenders but I'm having trouble with one of the junior bartenders. He insists I make drinks differently from the way I've been taught by the senior staff, limits my customer interaction, orders me around more than the senior staff, and generally gives me a tough time. I'm trying to think of the best way to resolve the situation. Should I confront him about it? Should I go to management? Should I just grin and bear it?

Answer:

Even the best bartenders have to work in a team. If it's a great bar, they'll always start you off at the bottom of the totem pole because there is a lot of information to learn. Some of that information is written and that's the easy stuff. But most of what you have to learn isn't written down. It's how the team works together and their individual personalities, how they handle being under stress and in the weeds. It's what bathrooms to use, it's the squeaky door that needs to be checked and oiled if need be everyday. In short, it's the culture of the bar and every person in it.

In this particular situation, it's a pretty simple answer. You learn what the junior bartender does and do everything you can to support them in doing the best job possible. If you have a question about a recipe, or a change in protocol from another bartender, you can ask them politely about it, but always defer to the bartender you are working with. Some bars are looser than others, no matter how great the reputation is, but all bartenders will have quirks and wrinkles and habits that differentiate them.

One of the worst things you can do is to go up the chain of command and complain. New hires are evaluated for their ability to fit into the existing culture first and foremost. Later, when you are an established and valued part of the staff, you can work on improving communication and cohesion.